Click to play videoBhubaneswar (Orissa): Every year, lakhs of Olive Ridley turtles come to nest on the Orissa coast, but scientists know little of their life and movements in the sea.
Now, scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India and researchers from the Orissa Forest Department are fitting 70 platform transmitter terminals on these turtles to track their movements.
Senior Researcher at the Orissa Wildlife Organisation, Chandrasekhar Kar, says, "The transmitters are fixed on their body. The transmitters will provide signals to the satellites while the turtles are in the sea and thus their movements can be tracked by studying these signals."
Each transmitter has a battery life of more than a year. With a lot of industrial activity off and on the Orissa coast, the transmitters, researchers believe, will help provide crucial data for the turtle conservation programme.
Says Chief Wildlife Warden of Orissa, S C Mohanty, "If only we have the information of their movements we can design plans for their conservation. It is impossible to keep the entire sea coast isolated to save the turtles."
Three years back, more than 15,000 turtles were dying every year during nesting season due to various man made obstacles on their sea route. Awareness programmes have brought down the casualties to around 3,000 now.
If the exact sea route of the turtles gets charted, it could further bring down the casualties.
Six years ago, the Orissa government had made a similar experiment to know the sea route of these endangered Olive Ridley turtles but unfortunately the experiment failed.
However, this time around, the scientists are quite optimistic that the experiment would be a big success because the equipments used this time are very sophisticated.
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